never mind
Not going to answer?
Sorry, just saw this.
Again, for your benefit, yes, that’s what I think. It also appears you’re not even aware you believe I’m not wearing white socks. You seem to be in denial about it, in fact.
Okay, so you think I’m in denial. How about yourself? I assume you are without a belief that I am wearing white socks. So, you believe I’m not wearing white socks? Why do you have this belief and how long have you had it?
Well, I’ve never thought about it, so I have no belief at this time. You could be wearing white socks, or you might not be. With lack of belief, I’m left with, “I don’t know.”
The white socks issue is not an apt analogy though. Although I could have evidence one way or the other, it’s not available to me at this time. The evidence I do have, however, is that sometimes humans wear white socks and sometimes they don’t. The issue is far more ambiguous (especially with respect to your specific case) than whether or not god(s) exist.
Now, if I got to know you personally and was exposed to as many data points as I have been with respect to the god hypothesis, I would be in a better position to make an assessment, and would develop beliefs about it.
It’s possible to have no beliefs in something if you’ve never considered that something and any of its related evidence, but once you’ve thought about it and been exposed to the data, beliefs become inevitable. I assume that if a person calls him/herself an atheist, he/she’s considered the data.
Yet, according to you, this is the same as saying you believe I am not. Why did you say that I believe you are not wearing white socks if I am without belief when this somehow doesn’t apply to you? Please answer this question.
Again, according to you, you’re also left with, “I believe you are not wearing white socks.” Lots of atheists feel the same way, btw, They also don’t know.
Plenty of atheists feel the same way. The analogy works just fine in this regard.
I don’t see how that difference matters. you don’t have a belief that I am wearing white socks and you admit this is not synonymous with believing that I am not. That we know that people that wear white socks exist and we don’t know that any gods do is irrelevant. You now admit lack of belief is not the same as a positive belief. It’s the same in regards to lack of belief in gods.
That’s you. Plenty of others have zero data points about gods because there’s no specific data points as there are many claims as to what gods are. They have zero data on the possibility of gods and are merely without belief due to the absence of that data.
We’re not just talking about the Christian god where we can look in a book and find data. We’re talking about any god that can be dreamed up or that maybe can’t even be dreamed up. Plenty of atheists have no data regarding why any god is probable to exist so they are without belief based on the lack of it.
Nope, you’re specifically ignoring what I’ve been saying all along in this thread. If you have no belief without specifically believing something isn’t the case, you haven’t considered it yet.
Don’t know what else to tell ya.
I didn’t ignore anything you’ve said.
I said:
“I’d really like to know if you believe that I believe you are not wearing white socks.”
You said:
“If you tell me you don’t believe I’m wearing white socks, it sure sounds to me like you believe I’m not.”
Asking for clarification I said:
"So you think I believe you are not wearing white socks because I am without a belief that you are? "
You said:
“Again, for your benefit, yes, that’s what I think. It also appears you’re not even aware you believe I’m not wearing white socks. You seem to be in denial about it, in fact.”
You said I’m in denial and I do believe you are not wearing white socks.
Now I’ve never given any more thought about you wearing white socks than you have of me, yet when I asked you if you also are without belief and that equals believing I am not wearing white socks you said:
"Well, I’ve never thought about it, so I have no belief at this time. You could be wearing white socks, or you might not be. With lack of belief, I’m left with, “I don’t know.”
Why do you simply have a lack of belief and not a positive belief that I’m not wearing white socks but I have both, and I’m in denial about it?
Why are you skipping over the rest of my post?
First of all, I was treating the white socks thing as a metaphor for believing there’s no god when I referred to your denial about it. I’m sure you don’t have a belief about my socks primarily because there’s no payoff in thinking about it.
Let’s be clear here about something else: “I have no belief” and “I don’t believe” are not quite the same thing, granted, but people (including you) who have been arguing that there’s a difference between “I don’t believe in god” and “I believe there’s no god” have been using the previous two interchangeably. That’s partly why I brought up the caveat of having considered that thing first. If you’re going to use them interchangeably, I’m going to assume that to you, they mean the same thing.
So, for instance, when you say, “I’d really like to know if you believe that **I believe you are not **wearing white socks” and then follow it up with, “So you think I believe you are not wearing white socks because **I am without a belief **that you are?” it looks to me like you consider “without belief” and “don’t believe” are the same.
Secondly, let’s not kid ourselves; whether I’m wearing white socks or not is not even close to the ratio of probability between god/no god because of the disparity in the respective evidence for both. It’s entirely fallacious to equate the two. That you don’t think this is problematic for your analogy is not something I’m going to spend cycles debating.
See the previous paragraph, and because there was nothing else in it that I haven’t already covered.
Look, if it makes you feel good to think you have no god belief, be my guest. I’m not going to disabuse your belief. I feel bad for the gaping void in your mind with respect to the entire subject of “gods’ real or not,” but so be it. I’ll assume going forward that when I say god, you’ll get a blank look on your face and repeat, “Insufficient data. Does not compute.”
I gave you the same analogy twice. Once about my belief in regards to you wearing white socks and once about your belief about me wearing white socks. You’re not explaining why the same exact analogy netted different answers. Whether or not there’s a payoff in thinking about it is irrelevant since I gave you the same exact scenario. Why was my lack of belief the same as a belief that you’re not wearing them but the same didn’t apply for you?
Yes, they are.
“I have no belief” and “I don’t believe” are the same. "I don’t believe… " and “I believe there’s no…” are different.
That’s right.
You haven’t told us why that difference makes the analogy a bad one. You also said they were the same even regarding socks several times when it came to my lack of belief, yet had changed your answer when it came to your lack of belief in me wearing white socks. You’ve yet to explain why my lack of belief means I have a belief that you’re not but the same didn’t apply for your lack of belief about me wearing white socks.
Not true. If you’re not going to respond to the posts I spent time writing, I’m going to give up on giving yours the same respect.
Some Schmo, are you doing this deliberately?
You keep trying to mischaracterise the atheist position when it is very straightforward.
Put it this way: I feel the same way about god that I do about telepathy.
I have seen no good evidence of telepathy and so I have no reason to believe it occurs. Conversely, I don’t claim to know that it cannot occur.
You might therefore say I’m on the fence and “don’t know” whether telepathy is real.
This is basically true but misleading. Given an infinity of phenomena that could be real, it makes practical sense to assume things aren’t real until given some reason to suppose otherwise.
I don’t bother to consider whether someone can read my thoughts any more than I consider being bitten by a vampire, or getting a smiting from god.
Those actually are synonymous. The one that means something slightly different is “I believe it’s not the case.”
However, people will often say “I don’t believe” when they mean “I believe it’s not the case”, and expect the listener to sort out the actual meaning (and in most contexts, the results are the same whichever meaning you pick).
I’m not “trying to mischaracterize the atheist position.” I’m an atheist, and I’m not mischaracterizing my own position. Clearly, atheists are not all the same. I don’t pretend to speak for all atheists.
There was nothing in your post (after the “mischaracterize the atheist position” comment) with which I disagreed. I don’t claim to know there’s no god. I claim to believe there’s no god. It’s a reasonable but provisional belief. It doesn’t mean I think a god is not possible. It just means I think none exist.
I’m not sure what’s so difficult to understand here, nor do I understand what the big deal is. Why is it so difficult for certain atheists to admit that? It’s certainly more cogent than claiming, “I have no god belief” as though on the subject of god, your brain is a blank slate. It seems pretty obvious to me that atheists who claim that do so out of a need to score a particular point with theists rather than a need to describe the true state of things.
Just pointing out that religion is not just wishful thinking. I am through. Your other posters have already taken the thread off-topic.
That’s not true at all. Simply thinking about a topic does not attach belief or disbelief about it.
Consider moral/immoral. Or interested/uninterested. These are not the only options. There are also amoral, and disinterested, which indicate, respectively, that morality does not apply, and *having no particular interest.
*
Sure. You could end up saying, “I don’t know one way or the other.” I mentioned that before, and called it a kind of agnosticism.
Well, I agree with what you said about morality (not that I think it’s analogous), but I don’t see any difference between “uninterested” and “having no particular interest.” (BTW, disinterested means “not taking sides” as opposed to “having no particular interest”).
How are those two opposed?
“Having no particular interest” is the definition of uninterested, not *disinterested *(at least, traditionally. Some people use them interchangeably).
No, not really. Uninterested indicates a lack of interest. However, a judge in a civil case (for example) would be disinterested, in that he has an interest in the outcome (it’s his job to preside) but not in either of the sides involved. Similarly, if I had two sons who played basketball for different teams, and those teams played each other, I would be disinterested in that I would not be pulling for one or another, but at the same time be very interested in the game itself.
Disinterested.
Semantic quibbles aside, the concept is valid. It is not necessary that a person either have an interest or have no interest, just like it is not necessary to either have a belief or to disbelieve.
I’d say that you’ve just shown that a person does either have an interest or has no interest, but there’s more than one way to have an interest. (And presumably more than one way not to.)